“Outing” and “Transphobia”: Informing a parent that her child was being “socially transitioned” by a school/college

[Steve3742]

So, I’m having a problem with my employer.

I am—or was—a Learning Support Assistant at Nottingham College, and have worked for them nearly continuously since 2006.

Last September, I was informed that a vulnerable 16-year-old autistic girl was to be socially transitioned within the college, adopting a male name and “he/him” pronouns. I was also informed that her mother had not been consulted and that this information was to be deliberately kept from her. After unsuccessfully raising my concerns with Safeguarding that withholding important information about her daughter’s health and well-being was a risk for the child, I decided to inform the mother about what was happening. As a result, I was fired.

The college’s decision to hide the social transition of a vulnerable 16-year-old girl from her mother was unlawful and violates both the Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE) statutory guidance and the Department for Education’s Guidance on Gender-Questioning Children. Both frameworks are informed by the evidence presented in the Cass Review, which emphasises that social transition is not a neutral act and can be harmful to a child’s welfare, particularly for vulnerable individuals.

Paragraph 208 in KCSiE states that supporting a gender questioning child “should be in partnership with the child’s parents” and clinical advice should be sought.

By engaging in this deception, the college directly breached safeguarding principles. Any collaboration between adult staff and a vulnerable child to withhold information from their parents is a clear violation of fundamental safeguarding standards. My referral to safeguarding referenced all these points but wasn’t acted upon. I raised these concerns multiple times during the disciplinary process, yet they were repeatedly dismissed.

I’m taking the college to a Tribunal for false dismissal (and am gardening to help with that, check the CJ site). But one of the objections raised against me is that I “outed” the child, with all the connotations that go with that, the abuse that gay children often face from unaccepting parents.

I don’t think the two situations are comparable. For a start, the parent already knew her child was gender-questioning, so she wasn’t “outed” in that sense. She was informed, by me, about what the college was doing, not any new information about her daughter. She was told that the college was facilitating the “social transition” of her daughter and, particularly egregiously, that the college was trying to keep this information about their activities hidden from her.

All the relevant guidance, some of which is statutory, states that she had a right to know this. That she had a right to be consulted about it. Indeed, that the college had a duty to consult with her about this. One that it not only failed in but actively tried to subvert by conspiring with a vulnerable 16 year old child to keep their activities secret from her. Conspiracies between adults and children to keep secrets from parents are a huge safeguarding red flag.

Not only this, but it can be argued that a child’s sexuality is the child’s business and, even if the college were to find out about it, they have no reason to disclose it to anyone. Even Section 28 didn’t put a duty on a school or college to inform a child’s parents that they were gay, were they to find out that they were. But the guidance quoted above does include a duty to consult with a child’s parents about their “social transition”, for good reason. “Social transition” involves the school or college making significant changes to the way it operates. Names must be changed, wrong-sex pronouns must be used by staff and students, decisions need to be taken about what punishments, if any, should be meted out to dissenters, and so on. Certainly, this is not a secret – all the child’s fellow students and all the staff in the class will know about it. It cannot be claimed, therefore, that this should be kept from the child’s parents in the name of privacy or confidentiality – such things do not exist for social transition, the nature of it requires widespread dissemination. It is instead, as I’ve already said, a conspiracy – a group of people working together to do something, and to keep their activity hidden from other people.

Nothing comparable could be said about gay children, even in the days of Section 28. This is not the same thing.

What do you all think?

I've pointed out to at least one poster that you said that there's no trans policy, as such. It hasn't stopped them from stating repeatedly that you deserved to be sacked for breaching that which does not exist.

I don't understand how informing the parents would put the child at risk. Surely the other kids will be going home and telling their own parents that Jane is now James etc.. and it would inevitably get back to the child's parents that way. Were other pupils instructed not to tell anyone that this child was socially transitioning? Silly question, I know they weren't. How could any teacher be comfortable lying to a parent knowing that they would likely find out from another parent what the school was doing.

Exactly. You can't tell an entire school that a child has a new identity without that information reaching the child’s parents. Even if all staff and students are told that the parents must not be told, this won't prevent this information reaching them eventually. It's only a question of who tells them and when.

If the child were at risk from the parent if they found out, I really question the original decision making from a safeguarding perspective there.

It was clearly made from an ideological perspective.

It's clearly nonsense.

If the parent found out that the entire school knew, all the children and their parents, and they were the only one who didn't, they'd be bloody outraged.

It's ludicrous that the school would put the child in that position if they considered the parent any kind of risk at all.

https://christianconcern.com/ccpressreleases/case-of-christian-teacher-sacked-for-raising-safeguarding-concerns-about-transitioning-8-year-old-to-be-heard-after-bias-controversy/

Just in case anyone is interested this case begins tomorrow. Also Nottingham area but Nottinghamshire County Council.

I'd heard about that. Similar to mine, but different. Sounds like the parents, in her case, knew what was happening to their child and, presumably, supported it, but "Hannah" disagreed. She might have a case - belief discrimination and the school and council's obvious safeguarding breaches, especially when it comes to toilets, which are specifically required by legislation to be single sex in schools (though there's a minimum age, I think, and it might not apply to 8 year olds) - but it's a different one to mine, which is more about whistleblowing and revealing to a parent information that the college was unlawfully hiding from her.

A reminder that if you are looking for a garden exposing Nottm College's secret transition of a child to her mother will help.

Posters claiming should can be ignored need to be aware that the word should appears several times on every one of the 185 pages. Must doesn't appear on every page.

It certainly doesn't mean that the vast majority of the document "can be ignored" at all.

The prevent section on page 156 is also "under review" but certainly does mean it's is also to be ignored or other approaches followed instead.

I wanted to circle back to this key point (my italics):

Separating children from their parents by encouraging secrecy and lies is exactly how grooming happens, as prevent training clearly illustrates.

I'm going to use this definition from the Met police when referring to "grooming":
https://www.met.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/gr/grooming/

I don't work with children and I've never done Prevent training. However, what now seems blindingly obvious to me, now that I've been reflecting on the specific point I've grabbed from the quoted comment, is that gender identity belief appears to tick many boxes that could trigger a prevent-type response to monitor and manage what's happening to vulnerable children when it comes to the potential exposure of children to grooming. To expand on this:

I've written on previous threads - possibly also this one - that at my children's school, many staff send emails to students with their preferred pronouns on them. I've asked the school to stop this practice because it's signposting the specific part of a belief which supports (as a core tenet) the idea that a child might not be in the right body.

Thinking a bit more about this through a KCSIE lens, what it also signposts is the idea that this staff member is a "safe person" to speak to if you're a gender questioning child who believes that they might be in the wrong body. The open question is whether this act is potentially the start of "grooming" a child because, no matter how well-intentioned it may be, it could play a part in a child deciding that this particular adult is safer than their own parents... which could contribute to a bigger picture of child becoming isolated from their parents. However, if my basic understanding of KCSIE/prevent is correct, the key point here is that there is no way to tell the difference between someone who is a) sharing this information with a child to genuinely be kind (from their perspective) and has no intention of contributing to a nefarious act of parental isolation per se or b) deliberately isolating the child, while appearing kind, reasonable and responsible.

I'm not talking about Stephen's case directly here because I don't want to put the child or the mum into the spotlight to make my point (and I accept that we don't know how the mum feels about gender identity belief - some parents share it too and some of those believers want to affirm), but as a general principle. I would hope that any staff member who is sharing their gender identity belief with children in the school is doing so without nefarious intentions - I should imagine that this is the majority case.

However, if I'm understanding safeguarding well enough - and also thinking about the Nolan Principles and Teaching Standards, when it comes to sharing personal beliefs in school - it's impossible to say for certain whether a teacher with preferred pronouns in an email is saying the equivalent of "Merry Christmas" or "David Koresh teaches us the path to eternal salvation". Until it's tested in court, I presume the law won't have a view on which type of Christianity gender identity belief is equivalent to.

I say merry Christmas to people. I'm not a Christian and I'm not signposting Christianity as such - because I'm an atheist (genuine apologies to Christians here. I'm aware I'm appropriating religion when I celebrate Christmas). But equally, even if I was inadvertently signposting Christianity, celebrating Christmas doesn't lead to harm. By contrast, KCSIE recognises that social transition can result in unknown harm. So why is it OK for teachers to promote their belief that "everyone has a gender identity", let alone act on it.

Bringing this back to the Nottingham College case, I am really struggling to see how it's OK for the school to view undertaking a social transition in secret from a parent is OK. Regardless of whether the parent also believes in gender identity, it's putting a child on a potential pathway to harm. KCSIE spells that risk out in paragraph 206 and the Cass Report that is mentioned within it.

D'oh. Quote fail. I had tried to grab a post from WarriorN on the previous page.

I question in what sense someone can socially transition if their immediate family don't know about it. We don't get to pick and choose who 'society' is. It just means 'other people'. Once the child was transitioned at college, there would be so many ways a parent could 'accidentally' find out anyway.

Too add:

@Usernamesareboring1 , setting aside my sarcasm and your bluntness earlier in this thread, I'm happy to take it at face value that:

a) you know the KCSIE document better than I do. I'm assuming you work in education in some capacity, so I would genuinely hope that you do
b) you don't think social transition is a good idea for gender questioning children (I think I'm representing your earlier comment properly)

From your posts, you're clearly on the side of the college regarding Steve's employment being terminated. Thinking about the "prevent lens" that I've described above, I'm struggling to understand what good reason there could be to prioritise process over the safeguarding of a child.

Or am I missing your point? Are you saying that Steve did the right thing from a safeguarding principle perspective (because of the risk re social transition as per para 206) but the college was right to sack him from a safeguarding process perspective?

Are you saying that Steve did the right thing from a safeguarding principle perspective (because of the risk re social transition as per para 206) but the college was right to sack him from a safeguarding process perspective?

Schools cannot have policies that require a staff member to override parents with parental responsibility.

I believe it is a legal principle that contracts can't require you to act unlawfully; if they do then that contract is void.

If a school policy/contract requires a staff member to override the decisions of parents with parental responsibility (without a specific court order), that policy/contract is nullified by being unlawful.

An equivalent would be a hospital that has a policy of doing medical procedures on children without informing parents and without obtaining their consent. That would be unlawful to require doctors to do that.

Thinking a bit more about this through a KCSIE lens, what it also signposts is the idea that this staff member is a "safe person" to speak to if you're a gender questioning child who believes that they might be in the wrong body. The open question is whether this act is potentially the start of "grooming" a child because, no matter how well-intentioned it may be, it could play a part in a child deciding that this particular adult is safer than their own parents... which could contribute to a bigger picture of child becoming isolated from their parents.

However, if my basic understanding of KCSIE/prevent is correct, the key point here is that there is no way to tell the difference between someone who is a) sharing this information with a child to genuinely be kind (from their perspective) and has no intention of contributing to a nefarious act of parental isolation per se or b) deliberately isolating the child, while appearing kind, reasonable and responsible.

This is a particular concern that I had not fully appreciated previously.

Pronouns in emails signal either extreme EDI training or that the writer is a believer.

That does have significant implications in school settings for any child who is gender questioning.

Just to stretch my analogy further - a pp said "Steve put the child at risk by informing the parents because he didn't know how they'd react";

In my analogy that would be a hospital not informing parents of a child's diagnosis "because we don't know how they'd react", treating the child in secret, and requiring all staff members not to tell the parents about the treatment, either. Then firing a nurse who tells the parents anyway.

They made a decision to over ride law then.

Pronouns in emails signal either extreme EDI training or that the writer is a believer.

Well, in the majority of cases I've come across, it's just that the person isn't particularly bright and hasn't spent 2 minutes thinking about it.

As my dh would say "assume incompetence rather than malice". In this case I'd say "assume naivety rather than true belief"

But I guess this is a digression from Steve's case

Yeah, that's my opinion of the case too

But it is significant if we are thinking about the neutrality that schools are now being asked to provide, and the lines around "lack trusted adults" in para 209.

It both signals "I'm on your side" for some - which could be very problematic if they are particularly activist minded about GI, and excludes those who understand that you can't change sex.

I think you're right in theory but those teachers who put pronouns in signatures have two "defences" against the accusation of grooming... firstly it's out in the open which is pretty key. It's not the same as a teacher beckoning a student to one side and whispering "I'm your ally". [I've no doubt that sometimes happens too.] Secondly if it's fairly widespread, it's less likely to be picked up as any particular signal. Most students will ignore it as meaningless noise.

I agree with you that they're not a particularly good idea. But I don't think teachers should panic about being accused of anything, if they have pronouns in their emails.

That's true. I suppose it's the lack of neutrality and purpose behind it.

The intention. Mostly completely naive I agree, but in which case unnecessary in the light of the fact they're working with vulnerable children

I agree with you that they're not a particularly good idea. But I don't think teachers should panic about being accused of anything, if they have pronouns in their emails.

Agreed. That's why I was saying that I think most teachers who share their preferred pronouns will be doing so with the absolute best of intentions. I also agree that most probably haven't thought much about why it's a "kind" thing to do. The problem is that they leave the door open for anyone who does have nefarious intentions in mind.

The pronoun sharing is part of a culture mindset in the school. One that unfortunately is open to someone who might have bad intentions being indistinguishable from everyone who doesn't.

I'm conscious that I don't want to derail Steve's thread but I do think the overall culture mindset in a college/school is important. If staff are encouraged to think that secretly socially transitioning a child (well, openly in the school but secretly from the parents) is an act of safeguarding, that's pretty concerning from a school culture angle.

Great analogy 👏

Seems like it.